Dasavatharam-In My Opinion

Another daring attempt by Kamal Hasaan. The story revolves around Govindarajan (Kamal haasan), a scientist at a US tech lab. Govind and his colleagues develop a chemical substance, which is actually capable of killing a million people to tame terrorism. But the team in-charge device plans to sell the chemical substance for a huge sum. Govind being a good natured man trickily takes the chemical substance into his custody. During his attempts to take hold of the substance, he was chased by one of the agents, Fletcher (kamal) in his company. Accidentally, the chemical substance was routed to India. Therefore Govind travels to India illegally in the goods container of a courier company in search of the chemical substance. As a result, he was labeled as terrorist. Fletcher continues to chase him in India. Whether Govind escaped from Fletcher and managed to save the lives of people from the ill effects of the chemical substance forms the rest of the story. The director has roped in the chaos theory and butterfly effect http://imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html in the story. But the opening sequences that ways back to the 12^th century doesn’t provide any basis for the movie. The director didn’t establish any explicit relation between the 12^th century events (idol drowning) and the 20^th century effect (tsunami). As a result, to the common viewer, both the events look like two separate stories. Moreover, the chasing scenes are very tiring and they fail to create a kind of curiosity among the viewers. Furthermore, the ten roles played by kamal, which is supposed to be the major attraction of the movie turns out to be a downside. Most of the roles are forced and do not fit into the story. But Kamal Hasaan has made full justice to all the roles that he has played. The actor has stolen the whole show. Asin who plays a Brahmin girl is present in most of the frames but has a very little part to play. She repeats the same “perumale” dialogue throughout all the frames. Other eminent actors such as Napoleon, Nagesh, KR Vijaya, Rekha and Jaya Pradha hardly show up for one or two scenes. The major upside of the film is the cinematography. The camera angles are very innovative and are of Hollywood standard. Kudos to the cinematographer, Ravi Varman. Similarly, the art direction is also worth a mention. The art director, Prabhakar has brought full life to the movie through his sets. The music director, Himesh Reshamiya deserves accolades too. In particular, the “kallai mattum” number rendered by Hariharan is lilting and brilliant. The placement of the songs and the absence of an obligatory duet song is also another aspect that takes the movie almost nearby to success. But too many characters and lack of a proper flow between scenes witness the flipside of the movie.